First Meetings
by skabs
Summary: How Butler first met his charge, and the first person Butler threatened for him. One-shot


Short- Just kind of an idle musing, posted mostly so you all know I'm not dead and I'm still writing. My Harry/Tomb Raider cross is kicking my butt... I'm just not sure how to end the year. I've got some ideas, and I'm pretty sure I know how the summer is going to go... but I need more reference material for that... gotta actually play (or watch my brother play) some Tomb Raider... Anyway I was just rereading a bit of Artemis Fowl and this sprang from my forehead, much like Athena from Zues.... (it was Athena right?)

Hope you enjoy! Artemis Fowl does not belong to me, he belongs to Eoin Colfer.

* * *

Butler had been called by his last name, exclusively, for the past six years. He's been called Butler for one specific purpose, and that purpose was now screaming his first calls of life. Or he should be screaming, but Artemis Fowl the Second had come into world uniquely. His tiny eyes opened, searched the room, seemed to stare straight into the soul of his doctor, and closed, unimpressed.

Butler just stood, shock straight still, by the door. He watched everyone that came in, everything that was carried out, and trailed the nurses with his gaze as they took his young charge to be bathed and weighed for the first time. It was nerve wracking, that heavy glare. Only Artemis Fowl Sr wasn't in any way affected by Butler, and that was only due to the fact that he had his own. His Butler was his son's Butler's uncle, and that one was currently on the other side of the door. That Butler was watching the entire hall with a hawk eye, and was making every nurse, doctor, and patient on the floor nervous even though they hadn't done anything.

The younger Butler had been waiting for this moment since sent to his boarding school at age ten. He'd learned things there that weren't taught anywhere else in the entire world… at least they weren't taught to pre-adolescence. Weapons, martial arts, tactics, culinary mastery, ect. Six months of every year spent learning, the other spent in practical application of his newly learned skills. There wasn't much he hadn't done by the time he'd passed the last test at age eighteen, the youngest to pass in recent memory. At the end of his training he'd been expected to go out into the world as a body-guard, an assassin, as anything that allowed him to flex his not inconsiderable muscle mass and add to the Butler legends… But just as his training was ending, the news came… a new Fowl was to be born. And Butler was now taking up the mantle that his family for generations had been trained for. The family Fowl, from the very first De Fole, had always been served by the Butlers… it is commonly believed that that is where the adjective itself had come from. But there were more Butler's than Fowls these days. It was the luck of the draw, of timing, of skill, that had this Butler standing at attention as his charge was born.

"Butler," the command came from his charges father, standing with his hands behind his back as he watched the nurses bathe the child.

"Sir," Butler nodded, but did not abandon his post.

"Come here," Artemis Sr told him. Butler paused for a moment, and granted each individual a sharp glare that reminded them that he was still watching, and that any trouble would be met with bloody and extremely painful death. Nobody moved. He then joined his secondary charge. Artemis the Second was his primary, and always would be.

The nurse washing birth fluid from the child seemed to finish with a happy little hum, and wrapped him in a soft blue blanket. She shifted to hand him to his father, who looked at Butler as if he expected the bodyguard to do something.

"Take him." Artemis did not move his hands from behind his back. This was important. Butler had to know who he was protecting. He no longer had a life outside his charge. He needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Butler only hesitated for a moment, and that was more because the nurse was watching them both with a glare that could only be her disapproval of the father's attitude to his son.

He held out his large arms and waited for the nurse to deposit the child. He almost growled at her as she seemed to not want to let him go.

"Sir, are you sure…" she glared at Artemis Sr.

"Ma'am if you do not give my son to his trained killer I will have his trained killer demonstrate his favorite move on you. I do not know what that move is, but his uncle's involves a rather large spray of arterial blood… and this is a new suit."

Butler just stared. The nurse gulped nervously.

"Of course Sir." The nurse carefully set Artemis the Second in Butlers waiting arms, and hurried out the door feeling as if she had just escaped certain death. She skirted around the Butler waiting outside with a large margin of error, and kept going.

The younger Butler, however, was now cradling the newborn in his arms. Carefully, ever so carefully, for he was a big man and the child so small, he was waiting for his next command. But as the time stretched and no command was given he looked up, aware now that Artemis the First was sitting at his wife's bedside, completely ignoring them. Mrs. Fowl looked rather beautiful for the excruciating agony that she must have been in just a few minutes previously. She'd been cleaned up and given a new night gown, and now just lay basking in her husband's adoration.

Butler looked down as the bundle in his arms squirmed a bit, and met the large light blue eyes of his charge for the first time.

It might have been magic, this connection that forged, as they just stared at each other. Butler was just glad that he hadn't been as summarily dismissed as the doctor had been, for the newborn Fowl just looked and Butler could have sworn he'd seen a tiny smile.

"Butler."

"Yes Ma'am," he replied without looking up.

"His eyes will change color you know," Mrs. Fowl had a smile in her voice.

"Yes Ma'am," he agreed, well aware of that fact. His sister had started out with blue eyes as well, now they were black as a pit.

"Are you going to watch them till they do then?"

"Yes Ma'am," he teased in his monotone voice.

"Very well, it seems I must never hold my child then," She sounded so wistful that it tore his gaze away involuntarily. He jerked up, and saw the parents just smiling at him, amused beyond normal proportions. Artemis the Second whined a bit, but quieted down at Butler set him in his mother's arms.

As he crossed the room to stand at the door he heard her turn to her husband. "I like him, he's got a sense of humor."

"Yes," Artemis Sr mused. "Unusual that. They tend to train it out."


End file.
